Digital content capabilities can be incorporated into a wide range of devices, including digital televisions, digital direct broadcast systems, wireless broadcast systems, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptop or desktop computers, tablet computers, e-book readers, digital cameras, digital recording devices, digital media players, video gaming devices, video game consoles, cellular or satellite radio telephones, so-called “smart phones,” video teleconferencing devices, video streaming devices, and the like. Links, such as display links, may be used to transfer content from a source (e.g., a memory storing image and/or video data) to a display. For example, a display link may connect a set-top box to a television or a computer to a display.
The bandwidth requirements of display links are typically proportional to the resolutions of the displays, and thus, high-resolution displays benefit from large bandwidth display links. Some display links do not have the bandwidth to support high resolution displays. Video compression can be used to reduce the bandwidth requirements such that lower bandwidth display links can be used to provide digital video to higher resolution displays. Image compression on the pixel data may be used. However, such schemes are sometimes not visually lossless or can be difficult and expensive to implement in conventional display devices.
The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has developed Display Stream Compression (DSC) as a standard for display link video compression. A display link video compression technique, such as DSC, should provide, among other things, picture quality that is visually lossless (i.e., pictures having a level of quality such that users cannot tell the compression is active). The display link video compression technique should also provide a scheme that is easy and inexpensive to implement in real-time with conventional hardware.